Shopping is a bit of a relaxing hobby for me, which is sometimes troubling for the bank balance.

Monthly Archives: July 2017

Shopping for some is just a ritual whereas others look at it as an indulging and exciting experience and still, a few others tag it as a taxing and tiring activity. The experience and expressions vary across age groups, genders and even geographies. Men more often than not plan to go shopping, if and only if there is an urgent need or at times, if it has to do with a special occasion or pleasing their spouse and winning over their girlfriends. Women on the other hand indulge in shopping more often and acclaim it as a stress buster, a fun activity and the best way, to kill any spare time at hand.

For most part, it tends to be exciting, except for when you go extravagant or end up getting stuck at a tatty and cramped store. Also, when you do not get to park your car close to the store, you have to get at. Reasons could also vary from not so supportive & welcoming store staff, lack of time, and store running sort of the stuff you are looking for and at times, even your poor memory. Nevertheless, shopping as an activity is unanimously supposed to give shoppers the much needed high, when feeling low and a surpassed sense of excitement when a kick is enough to let you switch your mood gears.

The modern lifestyle, lack of infrastructure, the social set up and demanding jobs have changed the way people shop. Over the last few years, shopping has evolved as an important chore that needs to be well planned and better managed. A few quick fixes could address the nuisance at hand and deliver one of the best shopping experiences to rejoice, with minimal efforts.

Plan Ahead: Sit down and think through, what is that you need? What is your shopping budget? Assign priorities to the items you need to purchase. Do not miss on deciding which stores to drop in at. Decide which items could be easily availed online if you wish to save on your valuable time, while shopping offline at the busy and crowded stores, malls, supermarkets or fashion streets. If time is a constraint, restrict offline shopping to items you can not settle for without having to view, check and deal with.

Shop Wisely: Knowing in advance what items to pick, in what measures & at what price helps with wise shopping decisions as you do not end up overspending. Use any coupons you have, to make purchases at your favorite or regular stores. Regularly check for the expiry dates of your coupons. Question yourself every time you wish to make a purchase, to know what matters the most? Is it the value for your money or pure indulgence? Believe it or not, they do reflect on the choice of stores, brands, the price you pay, the time you invest and your shopping plan, on the whole.

Do your Homework (For Special Occasions): You know, your spouse’s birthday is round the corner and you always wanted to surprise her with a birthday bash.

Well, a great idea if you plan ahead and implement it right! Simply, sit down and prepare a list of all the items you would need for the special day in right proportions and from the right stores. After all, you don’t want your spouse to be frowning at you after you have put in sooo much of efforts, planning and organizing the special day.

Manage Your Time: Decide beforehand, where to go and which stores to drop at rather than moving all around the malls and stores, which come on your way to the market. Also, take the directions or the map for the stores you will be shopping at. Good, if you have a GPS locator in your car! It would save you a lot of time, energy and even gas while hunting for items on your shopping list or going back and forth.

Forge Relationships with Support staff: Relationships with the support staff at shopping malls or supermarket stores always helps! The reason being, if you manage to pull the right chord during a conversation, you strike a relationship and that follows in with added shopping convenience, which means informed buying decisions, volunteering, supportive and welcoming staff members. This is how it happens: The conversations you exchange let you generate awareness about your tastes and preferences. So, the next time you go shopping, you will be amazed to see the staff members offering to help you out picking up the items on your shopping list, with greater ease and in a relatively smaller time span.

Go Online with the Web! : Use web applications, technology and the shopping tools besides shopper reviews (on product and services) to decide what to pick, from where and when exactly. The reviews more often than not tend to be helpful in making right purchase decisions. You know what’s in and what’s not!

The available shopping tools and gadgets help you save a lot of time by helping with better management of your shopping. eBay Shopping Carts, Online Shopping lists, Store shopping tools and other such web or desktop applications make shopping more manageable and more fun.

Involve your Family: Get your family members, your spouse and your children assist you with the grocery shopping, if not shopping for special occasions. Seek their feedback on the shopping list you prepared and check with them, if you have missed on any of the required items. Make your shopping lists accessible to them so that they could be of help to you, with your shopping chores (when you happen to be too busy or pre-occupied with your workplace assignments).

Would that not be great, if your spouse and children could pick up grocery or other regular stuff on their way back home? All they would need is your shopping list stored online, available over the web and shared or else, just accessible at home.

Be Smart on Pocket: Be sure, you have checked out the options available comparing in line with the prices tags while making a purchase so that you do not feel stupid and duped when next morning, your colleague walks over to you just to let you know that he got the same stuff for a few less dollars.

Store Chores: Have you been to this store before? If not, have you checked out on concerns like parking space, support staff, payment counters, the ambience, the total area the store is built in, hygiene, availability of basic stocks et cetra. More often than not, shoppers loose their patience at the store if the parking space is too far or too over packed for them to park or if the store is running out of basic grocery items like Sugar, rice et cetra. Even if you have to wait in long queues to get to the payment counter. What if, you keep bumping against other shoppers while trying to pick up stuff? How would you feel at a store that is too cramped to even walk through different aisles?

Better, if you already researched or gathered such information if you are planning to visit or check out a new store! For the rest, you have experienced it over and again and you know well, if it’s worth another visit………

Look out for Bargains: Bargains have always been looked-for, extensively indulged in and widely enjoyed by shoppers across all age groups, genders, social status and geographical boundaries. Why to miss on those big bargains and great deals???

Enjoy your Shopping: Remember, you enjoy shopping the most when you have a partner or a shopping companion who could help you make right choices, does not loose patience every time you switch stores, question your purchase decisions on and off and offers you a hand, when you have to pick up all your shopping bags back to your car. Just make sure, you have called upon and asked out your friend to join you, when you go out shopping. It makes the whole experience fun and all the more exciting!

Recall your last Shopping experience and list out the shopping traps, you got caught up with. Compare against this standard list of common shopping mistakes, shoppers tend to commit:

a) Forgetting your grocery list or shopping list, back home

b) Not sure, which are the items, you’re running short on

c) Enticed at the sight of all ‘New Arrivals’ and other displays at the store

d) Tickled by the idea of saving smart with “Huge Sales” and other such captions

e) Missed on one of the ‘Most Needed Items’

f) The “Impulsive shopping disorder”

g) Your kids running all over the store persuaded you, into purchasing a stack of unwanted stuff. Of course, you couldn’t say no to him!

h) You lost track of your shopping budget, going overboard!

i) Comparative shopping syndrome: Other shoppers give you pointers on what else you could need

j) Not so well Informed Store Assistants! Web could have been better than this

k) Long queues & waiting lines at the check counters. Time Out!!!

l) Jam-Packed parking lots, at the mall. And that extra effort, gas and the swelling bills.

Honestly, if you had committed even 3-4 out of these 12 most common shopping mistakes, it’s time you should look up to web for rescue. Don’t you agree overtime, your over indulgence robs you off the much needed cash at hand? Or else, shocks you with blown up credit card bills, at the end of every month. More often than not, the shopping trips culminate into a nightmare, with not so planned and unorganized indulgence at the shoppers end. ‘Online shopping’ on other hand is one where you still have a controlled shopping environment and as such, comparatively lesser chances of splurging & regretting, later on. Nevertheless, the disadvantages that accompany are as crucial to the shoppers. For instance: insecure online payments, home delivery concerns, mishandling of the stuff by shippers, late delivery, loss of shipment, visible differences in the item displayed online and in the shipment, received and much more.

Well, how about balancing your offline shopping with a little online planning? That means you can still evade a lot of differences, anxiety and shopping mistakes by combining a few web elements (or say tools) into your shopping activity. Make your shopping more planned, organized, more manageable and more fun. This is how you could do it:

1)Prepare a list of items you need to shop for. I knew you always did! But this time, I want you to do it over the web. Go online, open up a spreadsheet or a word document and quickly list out your items. Print and take them along. Follow closely, with the requirements you have listed out.

2)Shop online with smart gadgets and carts. This means, you can directly log on to your favorite stores like HomeGrocers.com or TraderJoe or any other store, you like for grocery and other related shopping. And simply, create your online shopping lists. Print them and carry it over wherever you go.

3)Try Shopping 2.0! In case, you don’t have a preference for stores and wish to shop at a combination of stores offline or online, use web applications and shopping tools like ‘Shopping List’ at Infodoro.com or Froogle at Google.com. These web based shopping lists could be created, managed, stored and even accessed online. This is the biggest advantage, if you had been forgetting your shopping lists back home. You can login and access it anytime and even over your cell phone.

4)Creating a shopping list not always means, only jotting down all items you need. This is anyways what your brain can easily store, process and recall. What could still slip off would be stuff like quantities, brands and the stores, from where you need to get an item. Utilize shopping tools like Shopping Lists and Froogle, to create an organized shopping list with items, item descriptions, stores, quantities, categories and more details you wish to capture.

5)Shopping Smart is not always about faster and organized shopping but also saving all the dollars you can. You got it right! I was coming to coupons, you could always redeem for items at the stores you shop at. After all, why end up paying more when you know you could save with coupons. Just make sure you are on the look out for coupons from your previous purchases and that in the newspapers and do carry them along when you go shopping. There would still be many, who will forget to carry them or completely miss on making use of it, while standing at the counters and making payments. The solution is to store all your coupons in a Shopping bag, no matter whenever you get your hands on one. Make it a ritual and keep doing it always. This way, next time you go shopping, you won’t have to at least forget them back home. And to remind you of the coupons when paying off the bills, simply list coupons or add coupons to your online shopping list. That means, indicate ‘Coupons’ next to items you have it available for. And do keep an eye on your ‘Shopping list’ when paying off the bills. This way, you’ll definitely utilize your Coupons and save a few dollars. Web applications like ‘ShoppingList’ at Infodoro and even online shopping stores, have a section for coupons on their online shopping list tool and shopping carts.

Shopping being an essential one for everyone can be fun and easy for some, while some would consider it a chore and irritating. Online shopping is the perfect solution for the home bound and for those who find shopping a difficult task. Online shopping has proved to be a boon for those who live in rural areas too. Whether you’re buying directly from a business online retailer, an individual online shopping site, or an Internet auction site, shopping online can be fun, simple, time saving and economical.

More about Shopping Online…

Since the development of the Internet, all hard-to-obtain, hard-to-do things have become quite simple that anyone can get anything from wherever they are, all by using a your PC. The Internet not only gives you an ocean of information you required, at the same time expands your shopping options like never before! Now, with only a few clicks of a mouse, you can go online to buy just about anything you need or want.

Festival shopping can be a real stress for most of you, and with Christmas just around the corner, it’s time for you to think about the gifts you have planned to buy. Secure online shopping gives you a little less shopping stress and saves more time, especially during Christmas and other festival season when the crowd packs the streets. Shop your things without venturing into the crowded shopping areas and wrestling your way between shoppers. Most important of all, you need not hurry or worry about finding a parking lot for your car. A simple online search can lead you to the right product at the right price, fast.

If you are looking for great online shopping suggestions or you want to find Australia’s best online shopping websites please read on…

Online shopping benefits…

Online shopping offers unbelievable convenience to the shoppers.

Online shopping allows people to browse through a variety of retailers, items and categories without leaving their home, compare prices with greater ease and order as many items as they can afford.

It provides round the clock service that allows you to shop at your leisure, regardless of your time. Unlike direct shopping where you can shop only during the showroom’s working time, online shopping allows you to buy things any time, 24 hours a day, seven days a week and 365 days a year.

Compared to physically going to a shopping mall to shop, online shopping can reduce overhead costs in a variety of ways that inturn reduces the prices to an unbelievable amount.

Online retailers too offer many attractive sales promotions. “Festival/seasonal offers”, “Discount sales”, “Buy one and get one free”, and “Buy now” could be few of them. Bargains can be numerous online.

Online shopping renders you great help if you wish to gift your daughter who is staying in another country, you can make her day special by sending her a jewellery set by shopping online.

With a click on your mouse, you can buy anything from flowers to fly tickets. Groceries, clothing, jewellery, gifts, wine, art, pet supplies, pharmaceuticals, sports goods and equipment, toddlers and kids essentials are some of the others you can get online.

The transaction you do is purely safe and your credit card data is encrypted.

Use the checklist below to help make your online shopping experience a safe one

Be clear with your needs & budget: With copious online retailers in the Internet, supplying anything you wanted are sure to confuse you while deciding on the one you are looking for. So it is important to be clear with your needs and preferences along with your budget to make your shopping easy.

Decide with your paying format: Be clear with your payment format, whether using your credit, debit or charge card before shopping, for making your shopping safe. It is always advisable to save and get your transaction records printed.

Check out the terms & conditions: Do read the terms and conditions of the site from which you have decide to shop, to be clear with the delivery, refund policies and warranty. It is a good idea to search and shop from retailers within your country, if you want fast deliveries and low shipping fees.

Setting up a high street store can be more complicated than it seems. Above everything you need a well structured plan of action. Assuming that you have a good plan of action and have done all the researching and have the funding needed to set up your shop here is a check list that will aid you with one of the most important sections of your store, the shop fittings and display units.

After premises and stock buying, fittings represent one of the biggest slices in the expenditure pie when setting up a new high street shop. The check list below will help you avoid some common mistakes as well as choose the right fixtures for your shop.

1. Have I found a premise?

First and foremost you need a well located premise for your store. No good setting up a stunning shop where nobody can see it or find it. I know that establishments in very busy streets have high rental prices but that will be money well spent.

2. Do I have existing floor plans?

Now that you found the ideal place for your shop it is time to make you floor plan. Where will be the counter be, aisles, shelves displays, etc. Might be a good idea to ask for professional help here, like hiring an interior designer or decorator specialised in store’ interior designs.

3. What will the shops branding / colours be?

Choose the style and colours of your shopfittings based on the colours of you brand/shop. There are many shop fixture manufacturers these days that can create fittings and displays according to your requirements. Some of the most popular shop fittings manufacturers are Tegometall, CAEM and KLEEREX and you can find them on all major shop fittings suppliers across the country.

4. What work needs to be conducted to the shop front?

Again depending on the type of shop that you are setting up, you will need to make some changes to the shop front. Sports shops need to reflect action and movement, a beds shop needs to pass calm and tranquility and so on, you got the picture, right?

5. Will I need to alter the shop usage? Once again depending on the type of shop you will have to alter its usage but there is one rule that suits all shop, accessibility. A shop needs to have easy access for your target audience as well as for disabled people. Displays settings also should be considered when thinking of your shop’s usage.

6. What display shop fittings will I require?

I hate to sound repetitive but, this is also related to the type of shop you are setting up.

7. What is my budget?

The biggest villain in all start ups, the budget. With money everything is made easy but how to start up a good shop with a tight budget? As before mentioned shop fittings represent a big slice in the expenditure pie of a shop so make sure you reserve some extra cash for it.

Like mentioned in check list number 7, before you go out buying shop fittings left right and centre, do some research to compare prices. Get a quote from at least two shop fittings companies and suppliers.

Once you have the answers for all those questions you are on the clear to start your new shop.